


Stitches

by WhiskyNotTea



Series: Whisky's Other Outlander Tales [3]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 17:21:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15756297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiskyNotTea/pseuds/WhiskyNotTea
Summary: Mary Hawkins Randall holds her and Alex’s baby for the first time.





	Stitches

It wasn’t an easy labor. Not that anything had come easy in her life. It had become a tradition by now, one not to be broken. Pain was embroidered in her life’s tapestry, its stitches too intricate, mingling with threads that had promised happiness.

Mary was used to it. She was going through it stoically, with eyes wide in terror and gritted teeth. She was waiting for the blow to pass, with a fear so deep that never got uttered, impossible to find its way to the world. It got trapped in her heart, behind her stuttering, behind her silent breaths that were too faint for the world to hear.

But this time, the pain was different. It ended up enveloping her like a white sheet, covering all the black memories, all the red stings. It ended up in her hands, an angel with rosy face and soft tufts of dark hair.

His father’s hair. The hair she dreamed of in Paris, after meeting him at Versailles. The silky and long hair she ran her fingers through, when it was just the two of them after finding each other again. The hair she brushed away from his forehead where it was plastered on his clammy skin, sweat-soaked from the pillow as he lay in bed for days.

_Alex._

“Can you see him?” she murmured in the thin air, feeling the oxygen of the room evaporating with each passing minute, seeing her own chest heaving, straining to take deep breaths.

She almost felt his lips on her forehead, almost saw his hazel eyes looking back at her own, kind and full of love. The only love she’d ever know.

Mary wanted her boy to be like him. She wanted Alex to live through their son, a proud declaration to the world that they existed, that their love was real and formidable. That he had found her that night, amidst pretentious aristocrats, when her handkerchief fell from her shaking hands, and he was the only one to stop that tremble. That papers don’t hold the truth of hearts, and that sacrifices are always made for the most loved ones.

Her boy was their love embodied, and she would cherish that until her last breath.

Running a finger through his soft hair, watching his pink lips searching, Mary untied her shift and put the baby on her breast. He fumbled, finding it difficult to stay on her nipple and she tried again, persistent in her desire to offer him everything she could, determined to nurture him and keep him safe.

Doing what his father would want her to do. What he had wished for, at the end. To protect them both.

The baby finally latched on and she gasped, surprised by the powerful sensation, one that she didn’t expect and yet, now that she’d felt it, she thought totally natural. “Hello, there,” Mary whispered when he started suckling, the baby’s tiny hand resting on her breast.

Proud, she looked at the hungry mouth around her nipple. No one had believed in her. No one, apart from Alex. And Claire Fraser. She was the one who told her to breastfeed the baby as much as she could, who gave her advice when the baby was but a little seed in her belly. Back then, in Edinburgh, amidst the rising. With her ivory skin and her caring amber eyes. And then she was gone. With a hug and a ‘take care’.

Everyone was gone.

Mary’s eyes were moist when they drifted back to the baby’s head and a faint smile settled on her face. She would never be alone again. She would have Alex with her – always.

Closing her eyes, she prayed for the baby to be healthy. It was her only fear now, the only thing she didn’t want his father to pass on to him.

“O Mary, Mother most merciful, let him stay by my side. Let him be healthy, let him have a happy life.”

The boy stopped suckling her breast and was now peacefully asleep. Rosy cheeks against white skin. Soft and tender, mother and son, as if they shared the same flesh, as if they had the same heart.

She looked at him then, whispering the name.

_Alexander._

Her eyes remained fixed on him, and she licked her lips, feeling that this wasn’t enough. And for once in her life, Mary decided to take fate in her hands.

She wanted a cheerful life for their son, one that would bring smiles upon his face. Like the smiles his parents had, after drinking their cheap wine in their cheap room, thinking the world perfectly made, unaware of the miracle they had created.

_Denys._

From Dionysus, the Greek god of wine.

Her son, himself, would have the power to bring happiness to his life.

And just like that, Mary drew a bold hand to undo the stitches of pain from her son’s life’s tapestry.

And just like that, a tradition had been broken.


End file.
